This is Comandante Narsha (aka Berendine Doh Rn) of Brown Eyed Girls with Communiqué #13 to the Occupy Movement and all comrades engaged in the struggle. Once again a magazine calls us out into the streets. I have spoken about the Occupy Movement before with a mixture of hope and pessimism. This latest call to action has a certain dark poetry about it considering what happened in Chicago in the 60s. We need to see these winter months as a period of rehabilitation and healing; a time to regroup, plan and theorize over the short burst of action that took control of Zuccotti Park and transformed it into an autonomous zone that for a brief, intense time broke through all of the dead weight of history and the everyday and opened up a space and time for the emergence of all of the joys and problems that come with real revolutionary action. So we go to Chicago and begin (although it never really stopped) the struggle. May IS the time! Rather than the debacle of Chicago may I offer this and this. May I also offer a few suggestions to my comrades. A few suggestions as to what you must NEVER do. 1. NEVER occupy radio or television stations for any length of time. Having at your disposable the means of mass communication to get out your message can only serve forces of recuperation. Showing thousands of viewers what a sham the media are can only hurt the movement. Also how upset would viewers be if they witnessed regularly the workings of General Assemblies and direct democracy and co-operation? We must never upset viewers. 2. NEVER confront the police. In any way. Law enforcement personnel in militarized full riot gear are only trying to do their best to maintain order. Remember they do not want to be there and are only following orders from their many bosses. 3. Tents are nice. 4. NEVER occupy the real seats of power such as banks, a commodities exchange, hedge funds and all the sites of capital. Rather you should protest outside Departments of Education or Social Services. These actions illustrate how dysfunctional and dangerous these puny, eviscerated bureaucracies really are to the public and how they contribute to the workings of capital. If you can, spend as much time as you can shutting down these institutions. 5. NEVER do anything without a list of demands. People like demands. If you need a demand DO NOT demand the end of capital. We know this current economic crisis is all the doings of a few bad apples. And here is a list of radical actions we need to put into effect everywhere: 1. A Robin Hood Tax because Robin Hood should be an example of radical action and taxation is the REAL issue here. 2. A ban on high frequency ‘flash’ trading because this a bad capitalist practice. 3. A binding climate change accord for polluters who need to be bound. 4. A three strikes and you’re out law for corporate criminals because corporate criminals should be given several chances to get it right. 5. An all out initiative for a nuclear-free Middle East led by Hilary Clinton and the NSA. Whatever we decide in our general assemblies and in our global internet brainstorm – we the people will set the agenda for the next few years and demand our leaders carry it out because we can all agree that it is our leaders who need to carry out all of these radical demands! Long live May! One more try people if you want to be Situationists and Revolutionaries! At some point we all have corpses in our mouths.
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